




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 


Chap. 


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Shelf L. 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 











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THE LITTLE EARL 



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“ ARTHUll AM) LAUNCELOT, AND SIR GAWAIN AND SIR 
GALAHAD, AND ALL THE KNIGHTLY LIVES THAT WERE 
ONCE AT TINTAGEL, A^'ERE MORE REAL TO HIM THAN 
THE LIVING FIGURES ABOUT HIM.” 


THE LITTLE EARL 


.BY 

“QUID A” 


ClliistrateH bg 

ETHELDRED B. BARRY 





I?' ' BOSTON 

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DANA ESTES & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


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Library of Con<,irft8« 

two Copies Received 

JUL 30 1900 

Copyright entry 

30 y//cf^ 
SECOND copy. 

IHntened to 

ORDER DIVISION, 

AUQ S 1900 


Copyright, igoo 

By Dana Estes & Company 



Colonial llress 

Electrotyped and Printed by C, H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston, U. S. A. 


^ . i'- . hjL Ti ' ~ • 'lii 'S' 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

“ Arthur and Launcelot, and Sir Gawain and 
Sir Galahad^ and all the knightly lives 

THAT WERE ONCE AT TiNTAGEL, WERE MORE 
REAL TO HIM THAN THE LIVING FIGURES AROUT 

HIM ” . . . . . . . Front iapiece 

“‘Run and play,’ Father Philip would often say 
TO him, taking him perforce from his rooks” 
“‘Stop, stop 1 what are you doing to the pig?’ 

HE SCREAMED 

“The rary, meanwhile, was placidly swallowing 

THE MILK THAT THE LITTLE EaRL HELD FOR IT, 
VERY CAREFULLY ” . 

“Two GRIM, RIG MEN . . . RURST THROUGH THE 

HAWTHORN, AND ONE OF THEM SEIZED THE 


LITTLE Earl ” 

In the Fowl -house 


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THE LITTLE EARL 



‘HE little Earl was a very little one indeed, as 


far as years and stature were, but he was a very 
big one if you consider his possessions and his im- 
portance. He was only a month old when his father 
died, and only six months old when his mother, too, 
left him for the cold damp vault, with its marbles 
and its rows of velvet coffins, — a vault that was very 
grand, but so chilly and so desolate that when they 
took the little Earl there on holy days to lay his 
flowers down upon the dead he could never sleep 
for nights afterward, remembering its darkness and 
solemnity. 

The little Earl was called Hubert Hugh Lupus 
Alured Beaudesert, and was the Earl of Avillion and 
Lantrissaint ; but by his own friends and his grand- 
mother and his old nurse he was called only Bertie. 

He was eight years old in the summer-time, when 
there befell him the adventure I am going now to 
relate to you, and he was, for his age, quite a baby ; 
he was slender and slight, and he had a sweet little 
face like a flower, with very big eyes, and a quantity 
11 


12 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


of fair hair cut after the fashion of the Reynolds and 
Gainsborough children. He had always been kept as 
if he were a china doll that would break at a touch. 
His grandmother and his uncle had been left the sole 
charge of him ; and as they were both invalids, and 
the latter a priest, and both dwelt in great retirement 
at the castle of Avillion, the little EarFs little life 
had not been a boy’s life. 

He had always been tranquil, for every one loved 
him, and he had all things that he wished for ; yet he 
was treated more as if he were a rare flower or a 
most fragile piece of porcelain, than a little bright 
boy of real flesh and blood ; and, without knowing it, 
he was often tired of all his cotton-wool. He was 
such a tiny fellow, you see, to be the head of his race, 
and the last of it too ; for there were no others of 
this great race from which he had sprung, and his 
uncle, as a priest, eould never marry. Thus so much 
depended on this small short life that the fuss made 
over him, and the care taken of him, had ended in 
making him so incapable of taking any care of himself 
that if he had ever got out alone in a street he would 
have been run over to a certainty ; and as he grew 
older he grew sad and feverish, and chafed because 
he was never allowed to do the things that all boys 
by instinct love to do. By nature the little Earl was 
very brave, but he was made timid by incessant 
cautions ; and as he was, too, by nature very thought- 
ful, the seclusion from other ehildren in which he 
was brought up made him too serious for his age. 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


13 


Avillion was deep-bosomed in woods, throned high 
above a lake and moors and mountains, and setting 
its vast stone buttresses firmly down into the greenest, 
smoothest turf in all the green west country of Eng- 
land ; a grand and glorious place, famous in history, 
full of majesty and magnificence, and sung to, for ever, 
by the deep music of the Atlantic waves. Once upon 
a time the Arthurian Court that Mr. Tennyson has 
told you of so often had held its solemn jousts and its 
blameless revels there ; at least, so said the story of 
Avillion, as told in ballads of the country-side, — 
more trustworthy historians than most people think. 

All those ballads the little Earl knew by heart, and 
he loved them more than anything, for Deborah, his 
nurse, had crooned them over his cradle before ever 
he could understand even the words of them ; so that 
Arthur and Launcelot, and Sir Gawain and Sir Gala- 
had, and all the knightly lives that were once at 
Tintagel, were more real to him than the living 
figures about him, and these fancies served him as 
his playmates, — for he had few others, except his 
dog Ralph and his pony Royal. His relatives were 
ailing, melancholy, attached to silence and solitude, 
and though they would have melted gold and pearls 
for Bertie’s drinking if he could have drunk them, 
never bethought themselves that noise and romps and 
laughter and fun and a little spice of peril are all 
things without which a child’s life is as dead and 
spiritless as a squirrel’s in a cage. And Bertie did 
not know it, either. He studied under his tutor, 


14 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


Father Philip, a noble and learned old man, and he 
was caressed and cosseted by his nurse Deborah, and 
he wore beautiful little dresses, most usually of velvet, 
and he had wonderful toys that were sent from Paris, 
automatons that danced and fenced and played the 
guitar, and animals that did just what live animals 
do, and Punches and puppets that played and mim- 
icked by clockwork, and little yachts that sailed by 
clockwork, and whole armies of soldiers, and marvel- 
lous games costly and splendid ; but he had nobody to 
play at all these things with, and it was dull work 
playing with them by himself. Deborah played with 
them in the best way she knew, but she was not a 
child, being sixty-six years old, and was of a slow 
imagination and of rheumatic movements. 

‘‘ Run and play,” Father Philip would often say to 
him, taking him perforce from his books; but the 
little Earl would answer, sadly, “ I have nobody to 
play with ! ” 

That want of his attracted no attention from all 
those people who loved the ground his little feet trod 
on; he was surrounded with every splendour and 
indulgence, he had half the toys of the Palais Royal 
in his nursery, and he had a bed to sleep in of ivory 
inlaid with silver, that had once belonged to the little 
King of Rome ; millions of money were being stored 
up for him, and lands wide enough to make a princi- 
pality called him lord : it never occurred to anybody 
that the little Earl of Avillion v^as not the most fortu- 
nate child that lived under the sun. 



HIM, TAKIN(J HIM PERFORCK FROM HIS BOOKS 



THE LITTLE EARL. 


17 


“ Why do people all call me ‘ my lord ’ ? ” he asked 
one day, suddenly becoming observant of this fact. 

‘‘ Because you are my lord/^ said Deborah, — which 
did not content him. 

He asked Father Philip. 

“ My dear little boy, it is your title ; think not of 
it save as an obligation to bear your rank well and 
without stain.’’ 

At last the little Earl grew so pale and thin, and so 
delicate in health that the physician who was always 
watching over him said to his grandmother that the 
boy wanted change of air, and advised the southern 
coast for him, and cessation of almost all study ; which 
order grieved Father Philip sorely, for Bertie could 
read his Livy well, and was beginning to spell through 
his Xenophon, and it cut the learned gentleman to the 
heart that his pupil should give up all this and go 
back on the royal road to learning. For both he and 
his uncle were resolved that the little Earl should be 
very learned, and the boy was eager enough to learn, 
only he liked still better knowing how the flowers 
grew, and why the birds could fly while he could not, 
and how the wood-bee made his neat house in the 
tree-trunk, and the beaver built his dam across the 
river, — inquiries which everybody about him was in- 
clined to discourage. Natural science was not looked 
on with favour in the nursery and schoolroom of 
Avillion. It was considered to lead people astray. 

So the little Earl was moved southward, with his 
grandmother, and his nurse, and his physician, and 


18 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


Ralph and Royal, — for he would not go without 
them, — and several servants as well. They were to 
go to Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, and they made 
the journey by sea in the beautiful sailing-yacht which 
was waiting for Bertie’s, manhood, after having been 
the idol of his father’s. On board, the little Earl was 
well amused ; but he worried every one about him by 
questions as to the fishes. 

“ Lord, child ! they are but nasty clammy things, 
only nice when they are cooked,” said his nurse ; and 
his grandmamma said to him, “ Dear, they were made 
to live in the sea, just as the birds are made to fly in 
the air.” And this did not satisfy the little man at 
all; but he could get no more information, for the 
doctor, who could have told him a good deal, was 
under the thumb of his stately mistress, and Lady 
Avillion had said very sternly that the boy was not 
to be encouraged in his nonsense ; what he must be 
taught were the duties of his position and all he owed 
to the country, — the poor little Earl ! 

He was a very small, slender, pale-cheeked lord in- 
deed, with his golden hair hanging over his puzzled 
forehead, that used to ache sometimes with carrying 
Xenophon and Livy, and underneath the hair two 
great wondering blue eyes, of a blue so dark that they 
were like wet violets. His hands were tiny and thin, 
and his legs, clad in their red silk stockings and black 
velvet breeches, were like two sticks ; people who saw 
him go by whispered about him and said all the poor 
little fellow’s rank and riches would not keep him 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


19 


long ill the land of the living. Once the little Earl 
heard that said, and understood what it meant, and 
thought to himself, “ I shouldn’t mind dying if I could 
take Ralph ; perhaps there would be somebody to play 
with there.” 

It was May, and there were not many folks at 
Shanklin; still, there were two or three children he 
might have played with, but his grandmamma thought 
them vulgar children, not fit playmates for him ; and 
so the poor little Earl, with the burden of his great- 
ness, had to walk soberly and sadly past them, with 
his little tired red-stockinged legs, while the little 
girls said to each other, in a whisper, “There’s a 
little lord ! ” and the boys hallooed out, “ He’s the 
swell that owns the schooner.” Bertie would sigh, 
as he heard : what was the use of owning the schooner, 
when you had no one to play with on it, and never 
could do what you liked ? 

You have never seen Shanklin, for you have never 
been in England ; and if you do go now, you will 
never see it as it was when Bertie walked there, when 
it was the prettiest and most primitive little place in 
England ; now, they tell me, it has been made into a 
watering-place, with a pier and an esplanade. 

Shanklin used to be a little green mossy village 
covered up in honeysuckle and hawthorn ; low long 
houses, green, too, with ivy and creepers, hid them- 
selves away in sweet-smelling old-fashioned gardens ; 
yellow roads ran between high banks and hedges out 
to the green down or downward to the ripple of the 


20 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


sea; and the cool brown sands, glistening and firm, 
twice a day felt the kiss of the tide. The cliffs were 
brown, too, for the most part ; some were white ; the 
gray sea stretched in front; and the glory of the place 
was its leafy chine and ravine that severed the rocks 
and was full of foliage and of the sound of birds. It 
used to be all so quiet there; now and then there 
passed in the offing a brig or a yacht or a man-of-war ; 
now and then farmers’ carts came in from the downs 
by Appuldurcombe or the farms beyond the Under- 
cliffi; there were some fishing-cabins by the beach, 
and one old inn with a long grassy garden, where the 
coaches used to stop that ran through the quiet coun- 
try from Ryde to Ventnor. It was so green, so still, 
so friendly, so fresh ; when I think of it I hear the 
swish of its lazy waves, and I smell the smell of its 
eglantine hedges, and I see the big brown eyes of my 
gallant dog as he came breathless up from the sea. 

Alas! you will never see it so. The hedges are 
down, they tell me, and the grand dog is dead, and 
the hateful engine tears through the fields, and the 
sands are beaten to make an esplanade, and the beach 
is noisy and hideous with the bray of bands and the 
laughter of fools. 

What will the world be like when you are twenty ? 
Very frightful, I fear. This is progress, they say ! 

But what of the little Earl ? you ask. 

Well, the little Earl knew Shanklin as I knew it, — 
when the blackbirds and thrushes sang in the quiet 
chine, and the sense of an infinite peace dwelt on its 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


21 


simple shores. His grandmamma had taken for the 
summer the house that stands in its woods at the 
head of the chine and looks straight down that rift of 
greenery to the gray sea. I know not what that 
house is now ; then it was charming, chalet-liko, yet 
spacious. 

Here the little Earl was set free of his studies and 
kept out in the air when it was fine, and when it 
rained was sent, not to his books, but to his toys. 
Yet it did not seem to him any great change ; for 
when he rode, James was with him; and when he 
walked, Deborah was with him ; and when he bathed, 
William was with him ; and when he was only in the 
garden, there was grandmamma. 

He was never alone. Oh, how he longed to be 
alone sometimes ! And he never had any playfellows ; 
how he would watch those two or three vulgar little 
boys building sand-castles and sailing their boats! 
He would have given all his big schooner and its crew 
to be one of those little boys. 

He had a cruise now and then off the island, and 
the skipper came up bareheaded and hoped my lord 
enjoyed the sail ; but he did not enjoy it. William 
and Deborah were always after him, telling him to 
mind this, and take care of that, till he wished his 
pretty snow-white sailor dress with the gold buttons 
were only rags and tatters 1 For the poor little Earl 
was an adventurous and curious little lad at heart, 
and had a spirit of his own, though he was so meek ; 
and he was tired of being treated like a baby. 


22 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


His eighth birthday came around in June, and won- 
derful and magnificent were the presents he had sent 
him ; but he only felt a little more tired than he had 
done before ; the bonbons he was not allowed to eat, 
the splendidly bound books seemed nonsense to a 
little classic who read Livy ; the toys he did not care 
for, and the gold dressing-case his grandmamma gave 
him was no pleasure — he had one in silver, and his 
very hair he was never permitted to brush himself. 

“ As I may not eat the bonbons, might I send them 
all to the children on the sands ? ’’ he asked, wistfully, 
of his grandmother. 

Impossible, my love,” she answered. “ We do 
not know who they are.” 

“ May I give them to the poor children, then ? ” 
said the little lad. 

“ That would hardly be wise, dear. It would give 
them a taste for luxuries.” 

Bertie sighed : life on this his eighth birthday 
seemed very empty. 

ti Why are people strangers to each other ? Why 
does not everybody speak to every one else?” he 
said at last, desperately. “ St. Paul says we are all 
brothers, and St. Francis — ” 

“My dear child, do not talk nonsense,” said Lady 
Avillion. “We shall have you a Radical when you 
are of age ! ” 

“ What is that ? ” said Bertie. 

“ The people who slew your dear Charles the First 
were Radicals,” said his grandmother, cleverly. 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


23 


He was discouraged and silent. He went sorrow- 
fully and leaned against one of the windows and 
looked down the green vista of the chine. It was 
raining, and they would not let him go out-of-doors. 
He thought to himself, “ What use is it calling me 
‘ my lord,’ and telling me I own so much, and bowing 
down before me, if I may never do once, just once, as 
I like ? I know I am a little boy ; but then, if I am 
an Earl, if I am good enough to be that, I ought to be 
able to do once as I like. Else, if not, what is the use ? 
And why does the skipper say always to me, ‘ Your 
lordship is owner here ’ ? ” 

And then a fancy came into his little head. Was 
he like the Princes in the Tower ? Was he a prisoner, 
after all ? His little mind was full of the pageant of 
history, and he made his mind up now that he was a 
princely captive watched and warded. 

“ Tell me, dear Deb,” he said, catching his nurse 
by the sleeve as she turned from his bed that night, 
“ tell me, is it not true that I am in prison, though 
you are all so kind to me ; that somebody else wants 
my throne ? ” 

Nurse Deborah thought he was off his head,” and 
ran to the physician for a cooling draught, and sat up 
in fright all the night, not even reassured by his 
sound, tranquil sleep. 

Bertie asked her nothing more. 

He was more sure than ever that a captive he was, 
kept in kindly and honourable durance, like James of 
Scotland in the Green Tower. 


24 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


Whilst he was lying awake, a grand and startling 
idea dawned on him : What if he were to go out and 
see the world for himself ? This notion has fascinated 
many a child before him. Did not St. Teresa of Spain, 
when she was a little thing, toddle out with a tiny 
brother over the brown sierras ? So absolutely now 
did this enterprise dazzle and conquer the little Earl 
that before night was half-way over he had persuaded 
himself that a prisoner he was, and that his stolen 
kingdom he would go and find, just as the knights in 
his favourite tales sallied forth to seek the Holy Grail. 
The passion for adventure, for escape, for finding out 
the truth, grew so strong on him that at the first flush 
of daybreak he slid out of bed and resolved that go 
alone he would. He longed to take Ralph, but he 
feared it would not be right : who knew what perils 
or pains awaited him ? — and to make the dog sharer 
in them seemed selfish. So he threw a glove of his 
own for Ralph to guard, bade him be still, and set 
about his own flight. 

He made a sad bungle of dressing himself, for he 
had never clothed himself in his life; but at last he 
got the things on somehow, and most of them hind- 
part-bofore. But he did it all without awaking Deb- 
orah, and, taking his sailor-hat, he managed to drop 
out of the window on to the sward below without any 
one being aware. 

It was quite early day ; the sky was red, the 
shadows and the mists were still there, the birds were 
piping good morrow to each other. 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


25 


“ How lovely it is ! ” he thought. “ Oh, why doesn’t 
everybody get up at sunrise ? ” 

He knew, however, that if he wanted to see the 
world by himself he must not tarry there and think 
about the dawn. So off he set, as fast as his not very 
strong legs could carry him, and he got down to the 
shore. 

The fog was on the sea and screened it from his 
sight, and there was no one on the beach except a boy 
getting nets ready in an old boat. To the boy ran 
Bertie, and held to him two half-crowns. “ Will you 
row me to Bonchurch for that ? ” he asked. 

The boy grinned. “For sure, little master; and 
I’d like to row a dozen at the price.” 

Into the boat jumped the little Earl, with all the 
feverish agility given to prisoners, who are escaping, 
by their freed instincts. It was a very old, dirty boat, 
and soiled his pretty white clothes terribly, but he had 
no eyes for that, he so enjoyed that delicious sense of 
being all alone and doing just as he liked. The boy 
was a big boy and strong, and rowed with a will ; and 
the old tub went jumping and bobbing and splashing 
through the rather heavy swell. The gig of his yacht 
was a smart, long boat, beautifully clean, and with 
rowers all dressed in red caps and white jerseys ; but 
the little Earl had never enjoyed rowing in that half 
so much. There had been always somebody to look 
after him and say, “ Don’t lean over the side,” or, 
“ Mind the water does not splash you,” or, “ Take 
care ! ” Oh, that tiresome “ Take care ! ” It makes 


26 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


a boy want to jump head-foremost into the sea, or 
fling himself head-down wards from the nearest apple- 
tree ! I know you have felt so yourself twenty times 
a week, though I do not tell you that you were right. 

Nothing is prettier than the Undercliff as you look 
up at it from the sea, — a tangle of myrtle and laurel 
and beech and birch coming down to the very shore, 
all as Nature made it. Bertie, as the boat wabbled 
along like a fat old duck, looked up at it and was en- 
chanted, and then he looked at the white wall of mist 
on the waters, and was enchanted, too. It was like 
Wonderland. His dreams were broken by the fisher- 
lad’s voice : 

“I’ll have to put you ashore at the creek, little 
master, and get back, or daddy’ll give me a hiding.” 

“ Who is ‘ daddy ’ ? ” 

“ Father,” said the boy. “ He’ll lick me, for the 
tub’s his’n.” 

Bertie was perplexed. He had heard of bears being 
licked into shape by their fathers and mothers, but 
this boy, though rough and rather shapeless, looked 
too old for such treatment. 

“ You were a wicked boy to use the boat, then,” he 
said, with great severity. 

The lad only grinned. 

“ Little master, you tipped me a crown.” 

“ I did not mean to tempt you to do wrong,” said 
Bertie, very seriously still ; and then he coloured, for 
was he very sure that he was not doing wrong him- 
self ? 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


27 


The old boat was grinding on the shingle then, and 
the rower of it was putting him ashore at a little 
creek that was wooded and pretty, and up which the 
sea ran at high tide ; there was a little cottage at the 
head of it. I have heard that this wood-glen used to 
be in the old time a very famous place for smugglers, 
and it is still solitary and romantic, or at least was so 
still when the little Earl was set down there. “ Where 
am I ? ” he asked the boy. But the wielded boy only 
grinned, and began to wabble back through the water 
as fast as his long slashing strokes could carry him. 
The little Earl felt rather foolish and rather helpless. 

He was not far on his way toward seeing the world, 
and he began to wish for some breakfast. There was 
smoke going out of a chimney of the cottage, and the 
door of it stood open, but he was afraid the people 
there might stop him if he asked for anything, and, 
besides, the path up to it through the glen looked 
rocky and thorny and impassable, so he kept along by 
the beach, finding it heavy walking, for there were 
more stones than sands, and the beach was strewn 
with rocks, large and small, and stiff prickly furze. 
But he had the sea beside him and the world before 
him, and he talked on bravely, and in a little while 
he came into Bonchurch. It was very early yet, and 
Bonchurch was asleep, and most of its snug thatched 
houses, hidden away in their gardens and fuchsia 
hedges, were shut up snugly ; the tall trees of its one 
street made a deep shadow in it, and the broad, placid 
water of its great pool was green with their reflection : 


28 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


it was a sweet, quiet place, leafy as any haunt for 
fairies, yet on the very edge of the sea. 

At a baker’s shop, a woman was lifting down the 
shutters. The little Earl took his hat off very prettily 
and said to her : 

If you please, will you be kind enough to sell me 
some bread and milk ? ” 

The woman stared, then laughed. 

“ Lord bless your pretty face ! I only sell bread, 
but I’ll give you some milk in, for sake of your 
pinched cheeks. Come along inside, little gentle- 
man.” 

He went inside; it seemed a very funny place to 
him, so small and so dark, and so dusty with flour ; 
but the smell of baking was sweet, and he was 
hungry. 

She bustled about a little, and set before him a bowl 
of bread and milk, with a wooden spoon to eat it with. 
The little Earl put his hand in his pocket to pay for 
it ; lo ! he had not a farthing ! 

He turned very red, and then very white, and 
thought to himself that the money must have tumbled 
into the sea with his watch, which was missing too. 

It did not occur to him that the wicked boy had 
taken both ; yet such was the sad fact. 

He rose, very sorrowful and confused and ashamed. 

Madam, I beg your pardon,” he said, in his little 
ceremonious way ; “ I thought I had money, but I 
have lost it. Thank you very much, but I cannot 
take the food.” 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


29 


The woman was good-natured and shrewd. 

“Lord! sup it up, my dear little gentleman,” she 
said to him. “ You are welcome to it, — right welcome, 
you are ; and your pa and your ma can pay for it.” 

“ No, no,” murmured Bertie, getting very red ; and, 
fearing lest his longing for the meal should overcome 
his honour, he stumbled out of the baking-house door 
and ran up the tree-shadowed road faster than ever he 
had run in his life. 

To be sure, he had plenty of money of his own ; 
they all said so ; but he never knew well where it was, 
or what it meant ; and, besides, he intended never to 
go back to his grandmother and Deborah and Ralph 
and Royal any more, till he had found out the truth 
and seen his kingdom. 

So he ran on through Bonchurch and out of it, 
leaving its pleasant green shade with a little sigh, half 
of impatience, half of hung’er. He did not go on by 
the sea, for he knew by hearsay that this way would 
take him to Ventnor, and he was afraid people in a 
town would know him and stop him ; so he set forth 
inland, where the deep lanes delve through the grassy 
downs ; and here, sitting on a stile, the little Earl saw 
the ploughboy eating something white and round and 
big that he himself had never seen before. 

“ It must be something very delicious to make him 
enjoy it so much,” thought the little Earl, and then 
curiosity entered so into him, and he longed so much 
to taste this wonderful unknown thing, that he went 
up to the boy and said to him : 


30 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


“ Will you be so kind as to let me know what you 
are eating ? ” 

The ploughboy grinned from ear to ear. 

“ For certain, little zurr,” he said, with a burr and 
a drawl in his speech, and he gave the thing to Bertie, 
which was neither more nor less than a peeled turnip. 

The little Earl looked at it doubtfully, for he did 
not much fancy what the other had handled with his 
big brown hands and bitten with his big yellow teeth. 
But then, to enjoy anything as much as that other 
had enjoyed it, and to taste something quite unknown ! 
— this counterbalanced his disgust and overruled his 
delicacy. One side of the great white thing was un- 
bitten; he took an eager, tremulous little bite out 
of that. 

“ But, oh ! ” he cried in dismay as he tasted, “ it has 
no taste at all, and what thei^e is, is nasty ! ” 

“Turnips is main good,” said the boy. 

“ Oh, no said the little Earl, with intense horror ; 
and he threw the turnip down amongst the grass, and 
went away sorely puzzled. 

“ Little master,” roared Hodge after him, “ I’ll bet 
as you aren’t hungry.” 

That was it, of course. 

The little Earl was not really hungry, — never had 
been really hungry in all his life. But this explana- 
tion of natural philosophy did not occur to him, not 
even when the boy hallooed it after him. He only 
said to himself, “ How can that boy eat that filthy 
thing ? and he really did look as if he liked it so ! ” 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


31 


Presently, after trotting a mile or so, he passed a 
little shop set all by itself at the end of a lane, — 
surely the tiniest, loneliest shop in Great Britain. 
But a cheery-looking old woman kept it, and he saw 
it had bread in it, as well as many other stuffs, and 
tin canisters that were to him incomprehensible. 

“ If you please,” he said, rather timidly, offering the 
gold anchor off the ribbon of his hat, “ I have lost my 
money, and could you be so kind as to give me any 
breakfast for this ? ” 

The old woman smelt the anchor, bit it, twinkled 
her eyes, and then drew a long face. “ It ain’t worth 
tuppence, master,” she said ; “ but ye’re mighty small 
to be out by yourself, and puny like : I don’t say as 
how I won’t feed yer.’^ 

“ Thanks,” said Bertie, who did not know at all 
what his anchor was worth. 

‘‘ Come in out o’ dust,” said the old woman, smartly, 
and then she bustled about and set him down in her 
little den to milk, bread, and some cold bacon. 

That he had no appetite was the despair of his 
people and physician at home, and cod-liver oil, steel, 
quinine, and all manner of nastiness had been admin- 
istered to provoke hunger in him, with no effect ; by 
this time, however, he had almost as much hunger 
as the boy who had munched the turnip. 

Nothing had ever tasted to him half so good in his 
life. 

The old woman eyed him curiously. ‘‘ You’s a 
runaway,” she thought ; “ but I’ll not raise the cry 


32 


THE LITTLE EARL, 


after ye, or they’ll come spying about this bit o’ 
gold.” 

She said to herself that the child would come to no 
harm, and when a while had gone by she would step 
over to Ryde or Newport and get a guinea on the 
brooch. 

Her little general shop was not a very prosperous 
business, though useful to the field-folk ; and sanding 
her sugar, and putting clay in her mustard, and adding 
melted fat to her butter, had not strengthened her 
moral principles. 

As Bertie was eating, there came a very thin, 
scantily clad, miserable-looking woman, who held out 
a halfpenny. ‘‘ A sup o’ milk for Susie, missus,” she 
said, in a very pitiful, faint voice. 

“ How be Sue ? ” asked the mistress of the shop. 
The woman shook her head with tears running down 
her hollow cheeks. 

“ My boy he’s gone in spinney,” she murmured, 
“ to try and catch summat, if he can ; will you change 
it, missus, if he git a good bird ? ” 

The old woman winked, frowned, and glanced at 
Bertie. 

“ Birds aren’t good eatin’ on fust of July,” she ob- 
served, as she handed the milk. The woman paid the 
halfpenny and hurried away with the milk. 

“ I think that woman is very poor,” said Bertie, 
questioningly and solemnly. 

The old dame chuckled. 

“ No doubts o’ that, master.” 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


33 


Then you are cruel to take her money : you should 
have given her the milk.’’ 

“ Ho, ho, little sir ! be you a parson in a gownd ? 
I’m mappen poor as she, and she hiv desarved all she 
gits, for her man he were a poacher, and he died in 
jail last Jannivery.” 

‘‘A poacher!” said Bertie, with the natural in- 
stinctive horror of a landed gentleman. “ And her 
son was going to snare a bird ! ” he cried, with light 
breaking in on him ; and you would give them things 
in exchange for the bird ! Oh, what a very cruel, 
what a very wicked woman you are 1 ” 

For an answer she shied at him a round wooden 
trencher, which missed its aim and struck a basket of 
eggs and smashed them, and one of the panes of her 
shop-window as well. 

Bertie got up and walked slowly out of the door, 
keeping his eyes upon her. 

‘‘ When I see a magistrate, I shall tell him about 
you,” he’ said, solemnly : “ you tempt poor people ; 
that is very dreadful.” 

The enraged woman, in her outraged feelings, threw 
a pail of dirty water after him, some of which splashed 
him and completed the disfigurement of his white 
suit. He looked up and down to see the poor 
woman with the milk, that he might console her 
poverty and open her eyes to her sins ; but she was 
not within sight ; and Bertie reflected that if he stopped 
to correct other people’s errors he should never see 
the world and find his kingdom. 


34 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


He had eaten a hearty meal, and his spirits rose, 
and his heart was full of hope and valour; and if he 
had only had Ralph with him, he would have been 
quite happy. 

So he went away valorously across a broad rolling 
down, and about half a liiile farther on he came to a 
little shed. In the shed were a fire, and a man, and 
a pig ; in the fire was an iron, and the pig was tied 
by a rope to a ring. Bertie saw the man take the 
red-hot iron and go up to the pig. Bertie’s face grew 
blanched with horror. 

“ Stop, stop ! what are you doing to the pig ? ” he 
screamed, as he ran in to the man, who looked up 
and stared. 

“I be branding the pig. Get out, or I’ll brand 
you ! ” he cried. Bertie .held his ground ; his eyes 
were flashing. 

“ You wicked, wicked man ! Do you not know that 
poor pig was made by God ? ” 

“ Dunno,” said the wretch, with a grin. ‘ “ She’ll 
be eat by men, come Candlemas! I be marking of 
her, ’cos I’ll turn her out on the downs with t’other. 
Git out, youngster ! You’ve no call here.” 

Bertie planted himself firmly on his feet, and 
doubled his little fists. 

‘‘ I will not see you do such a cruelty to a poor 
dumb thing,” he said, while he grew white as death, 
“ I will noV^ 

The man scowled and yet grinned. 

‘‘ Will you beat me, little Hop-o’-my-thumb ? ” 





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SCREA-’MED.” 


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THE LITTLE EARL. 


37 


Bertie put himself before the poor black pig, who was 
squealing from mere fright and the scorch of the fire. 

“ You shall not get the pig without killing me first. 
You are a cruel man.’^ 

The man grew angry. 

“Tell you what, youngster : Tve a mind to try the 
jumping-irons on you for your impudence. You look 
like a drowned white kitten. Clear off, if you don’t 
want to taste something right red-hot.” 

Bertie’s whole body grew sick, but he did not move, 
and he did not quail. 

“ I would rather you did it to me than to this poor 
thing,” he answered. 

“ I’m blowed ! ” said the man, relaxing his wrath 
from sheer amazement. “ Well, you’re a good plucked 
one, you are.” 

“ I do not know what you mean,” said Bertie, a 
little haughtily ; “ but you shall not hurt the pig.” 

“ Darn me ! ” yelled the man ; “ I’ll burn you, sure 
as you live, if you don’t kneel on your bare bones and 
beg my pardon.” 

“ I will not do that.” 

“ You won’t beg my pardon for cheeking me ?” 

“ No ; you are a wicked man.” 

Bertie’s eyes closed ; he grew faint ; he fully believed 
that in another instant he would feel the hissing fire 
of the brand. But he did not yield. 

The man’s hand dropped to his side. 

“You area plucked one,” he said, once more. 
“ Lord, child, it was a joke. You’re such a rare 


38 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


game un, to humour you, there, I’ll let the crittur go 
without marking her. But you’re a rare little fool, 
if you’re not an angel down from on high.” 

Bertie’s eyes filled with tears. He held his hand 
out royally to be kissed, as he was used to do at 
Avillion. 

The big, black-looking man crushed it in his own 
brown paw. 

“ My ! you’re a game un ! ” he muttered, with 
wonder and awe. 

“And you will never, never, never burn pigs any 
more ? ” said Bertie, searching his face with his own 
serious large eyes. 

“ I’ll ne’er brand this un,” said the man, with a 
shamefaced laugh. “ Lord, little sir, you’re the first 
as ever got as much as that out of me ! ” 

“ But you never must do it,” said Bertie, solemnly. 
“ It is wicked of you, and God is angry ; and it is 
very mean for you, such a big man and so strong, 
to hurt a defenceless dumb thing. You must never 
do it.” 

“ What is your name, little master ? ” said the big 
man, humbly. 

“ They call me Avillion.” 

“ William ? Then I’ll say William all the days of 
my life at my prayers o’ Sundays,” said the man, 
with some emotion, and murmured to himself, “ Such 
a game un I never seed.” 

“ Thanks very much,” said Bertie, gently, and then 
he lifted his hat politely, and went out of the shed 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


39 


before the man could recover from his astonish- 
ment. When the little Earl looked back, he saw 
the giant pouring water on the fire, and the pig was 
loose. 

“ I was afraid,” thought Bertie. “ But he should 
have burnt me all up every bit : I never would have 
given in.” 

And something seemed to say in his ear, “The 
loveliest thing in all the world is courage that goes 
hand in hand with mercy ; and these two together can 
work miracles, like magicians.” 

By this time Bertie, except for a certain inalienable 
grace and refinement that were in his little face and 
figure, had few marks of a young gentleman. His 
snowy serge was smirched and stained with black- 
berries ; his red stockings, from the sea-water and the 
field-mud, had none of their original colour ; his hat 
had been bent and crumpled by his fall, and his hair 
was rough. Nobody passing him could have dreamt 
that this sorry wanderer was a little earl. Neverthe- 
less, when he had been dressed in his little court suit 
and had been taken to see the queen once at Balmoral, 
he had never been a quarter so proud nor a tenth part 
so happy. He longed to meet Cromwell, and Richard 
the Third, and Gessler, and Nero. He began to feel 
like all the knights he had ever read of, and those 
were many. 

Presently he saw a little maiden weeping. She 
was an ugly little maiden, with a shock head of 
red hair, and a wide mouth, and a brickdust skin; 


40 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


but she was crying. In his present heroic mood, he 
could not pass her by unconsoled. 

“ Little girl, why do you cry ? he said, stopping in 
the narrow green lane. 

She looked at him out of a sharp little eye, and her 
face puckered up afresh. 

‘‘ I’se going to schule, little master ! ” 

“To school, do you mean? And why does that 
make you cry ? Can you read ? ’’ 

“ Naw,’’ said the maiden, and sobbed loudly. 

“Then why are you not glad to go and learn?’’ 
said Bertie, in his superior wisdom. 

“ There’s naebody to do nowt at home,” said the 
red-haired one, with a howl. “ Mother’s abed sick, 
and Tam’s hurt his leg, and who’ll mind baby ? He’ll 
tumble the kittle o’er hisself, I know he will, and 
he’ll be scalt to death, ’ll baby ! ” 

“ Dear, dear ! ” said Bertie, sympathetically. “ But 
why do you go to school then ? ” 

“’Cos I isn’t thirteen,” sobbed the shock-haired 
nymph ; “ I’se only ten. And daddy was had up las’ 
week and pit in prison ’cos he kept me at home. 
And if I ain’t at home, who’ll mind baby, and who’ll 
bile the taters, and who’ll — ? Oh, how I wish I was 
thirteen ! ” 

Bertie did not understand. He had never heard of 
the School Board. 

“ What does your father do ? ” he asked. 

“ Works i’ brick-field. All on us work i’ brick- 
field. I can take baby to brick-field; he sit in the 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


41 


clay beautiful, but they awn’t let me take him to 
schule, and he’ll be scalt, I know he’ll be scalt. He’ll 
allers get a-nigh the kittle if he can.” 

“ But it is very shocking not to know, how to read,” 
said the little Earl, very gravely. “ You should have 
learned that as soon as you could speak. I did.” 

“ Maybe yours aren’t brick-field folk,” said the little 
girl, stung by her agony to sarcasm. “ I’ve allers had 
a baby to mind, ever since I toddled ; first ’twas Tam, 
and then ’twas Dick, and now ’tis this un. I dunno 
want to read ; awn’t make bricks a-readin’.” 

‘‘Oh, but you will learn such beautiful things,” 
said Bertie. “I do think, you know, that you ought 
to go to school.” 

“ So the gemman said as pit dad in th’ lock-up,” 
said the recalcitrant one, doggedly. “ Butiful things 
aren’t o’ much count, sir, when one’s belly’s empty. 
I oodn’t go to the blackguds now, if ’tweren’t as poor 
dad says as how I must, ’cos they lock him up.” 

“ It seems very hard to lock him up,” said Bertie, 
with increasing sympathy ; “ and I think you ought 
to obey him and go. I will see if I can find the 
baby. Where do you live ? ” 

She pointed vaguely over the copses and pastures. 
“ Go on a mile, and you’ll see Jim Bracken’s cottage ; 
but. Lord love you ! you'll ne’er manage baby.” 

“ I will try,” said Bertie, sweetly. His fancy as 
well as his charity was stirred ; for he had never, 
that he knew of, seen a baby. “ But indeed you 
should go to school.” 


42 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


“ Tm a-going,” said the groaning and blowsy hero- 
ine, with a last sob, and then she set off running as 
quickly as a pair of her father’s boots, ten times too 
large, allowed her, her slate and her books making a 
loud clatter as she struggled on her way. 

He was by this time very tired, for he was not 
used to such long walks ; but curiosity and compas- 
sion put fresh spirit into his heart, and his small legs 
pegged valorously over the rough ground, the red 
stockings and the silver buckles becoming by this 
time much begrimed with mud. 

He knocked at one cottage door, and saw only a 
very cross old woman, who flourished a broom at him. 

“ No, it bean’t Jim Bracken’s. Get you gone ! — 
you look like a runaway.” 

Now, a runaway he was ; and, as truth when we 
are guilty is always even as a two-edged sword, Bertie 
coloured up to the roots of his hair, and bolted off as 
fast as he could to the only other cottage visible, 
beyond a few acres of mangel-wurzel and all the 
lucern family, which the little Earl fancied were 
shamrocks. For he was far on in Euclid, could 
speak German well, and could spell through Tacitus 
fairly, but about the flowers of the field and the 
grasses no one had ever thought it worth while to 
tell him anything at all. Indeed, to tell you the 
truth, I do not think his tutors knew anything about 
them themselves. 

This other cottage was so low, so covered up in its 
broken thatch, which in turn was covered with lichen. 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


43 


and was so tumble-down and sorrowful-looking, that 
Bertie thought it was a ruined cow-shed. However, 
it stood where the schoolgirl had pointed ; so he took 
his courage in both hands, as we say in French, and 
advanced to it. The rickety door stood open, and he 
saw a low, miserable bed with a miserable woman lying 
on it; a shock-headed boy sprawled on the floor, an- 
other crouched before a fire of brambles and sods, 
and between the legs of this last boy was a strange, 
uncouth, shapeless object, which, but for the fact that 
it was crying loudly, never would have appeared to 
his astonished eyes as the baby for whom was proph- 
esied a tragic and early end by the kettle. The 
boy who had this object in charge stared with two 
little round eyes. 

‘‘ Mamsey, there’s a young gemman,” he said, in an 
awed voice. 

Bertie took off his hat, and went into the room 
with his prettiest grace. 

“ If you please, are you very ill ? ” he said, in his little 
soft voice, to the woman in bed. “ I met — I met — a 
little girl who was so anxious about the baby, and I said 
I would come and see if I could be of any use — ” 

The woman raised herself on one elbow, and looked 
at him with eager, haggard eyes. 

“ Lord, little sir, there’s naught to be done for us, 
— leastways, unless you had a shillin’ or two — ” 

“ I have no money,” murmured Bertie, feeling very 
unlike a little earl in that moment. The woman gave 
a weary, angry sigh and sank back indifferent. 


44 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


Can I do nothing ? ’’ said Bertie, wistfully. 

“ By golly ! ” said the boy on the floor, “ unless 
you’ve got a few coppers, little master — ” 

“ Coppers ? ” repeated the little Earl. 

“ Pence,” said the boy, shortly ; then the baby began 
to howl, and the boy shook it. 

“ Do please not make it scream so,” said Bertie. 
“ That is what you call the baby, is it not ? ” 

Iss,” said the boy Dick, sullenly. “ This here’s 
baby, cuss him ! and what bisness be he of yourn ? ” 

For interference without coppers to follow was a 
barren intruder that he was disposed to resent. 

“ I thought I could amuse him,” said Bertie, 
timidly. “ I told your sister I would.” 

Dick roared into loud guffaws. 

“ Baby’d kick you into middle o’ next week, you 
poor little puny spindle-shanks ! ” said this rude boy ; 
and Bertie felt that he was very rude, though he had 
no idea what was meant by spindle-shanks. 

The other boy, who was lying on his stomach, — a 
sadly empty little stomach, — here reversed his posi- 
tion and stared up at Bertie. 

“I think you’re a kind little gemman,” he said, 
and Dick’s cross ’cos he’s broke his legs, and we’ve 
had no vittles since yesternoon, and only a sup o’ tea 
Peg made afore she went, and mother’s main bad, that 
she be.” 

And tears rolled down this gentler little lad’s dirty 
cheeks. 

‘^Oh, dear, what shall I do?” said Bertie, with a 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


45 


sigh ; if he had only had the money and the watch 
that had fallen into the sea ! He looked around him 
and felt very sick ; it was all so dirty, so dirty ! — and 
he had never seen dirt before ; and the place smelt 
very close and sour, and the children’s clothes were 
mere rags, and the woman was all skin and bone, on 
her wretched straw bed ; and the unhappy baby was 
screaming loudly enough to be heard right across the 
sea to the French coast. 

“ Baby, poor baby, don’t cry so ! ” said Bertie, very 
softly, and he dangled the ends of his red sash before 
its tearful eyes, and shook them up and down. The at- 
tention of the baby was arrested, it ceased to howl, and 
put out its hands, and began to laugh instead ! Bertie 
was very proud of his success, and even the sullen 
Hick muttered, “ Well, I never ! ” 

The little Earl undid his scarf and let the baby 
pull it toward itself. Dick’s eyes twinkled greedily. 
“ Master, that’d sell for summat ! ” 

“ Oh, you must not sell it,” said the little Earl, 
eagerly. “ It is to amuse the poor baby. And what 
pretty, big eyes he has ! How he laughs ! ” 

“Your shoes ’ud sell,” muttered Dick. 

“ Dick ! don’t, Dick ! that’s begging,” muttered 
Tam. Bertie stared in surprise. To sell his shoes 
seemed as odd as to be asked to sell his hair or his 
hands. The woman opened her fading, glazing eyes. 

“ They’re honest boys, little sir ; you’ll pardon of 
’em; they’ve eat nothing since yesternoon, and then 
’twas only a carrot or two, and boys is main hungry.” 


46 


TBE LITTLE EARL. 


And have you nothing ? ” said Bertie, aghast at 
the misery in this unknown world. 

How’d we have anything ? ” said the sick woman, 
grimly. They’ve locked up my man, and Peg’s sent 
to school while we starve ; and nobody earns nothin’, 
for, Dick’s broke his leg, and I’ ve naught in my breasts 
for baby — ” 

“ But would not somebody you work for — or the 
priest — ?” began Bertie. 

“ Passon don’t do nowt for us, — my man’s a Meth- 
ody; and at brick-field they don’t mind us; if we 
be there, well an’ good, — we work and get paid ; and 
if we isn’t there, well — some un else is. That’s all.” 
Then she sank back, gasping. 

Bertie stood woebegone and perplexed. 

Did you say my shoes would sell ? ” he mur- 
mured, very miserably, his mind going back to the 
history of St. Martin and the cloak. 

Dick brightened up at once. 

“ Master, Pll get three shillin’ on ’em, maybe more, 
down in village yonder.” 

“ You mus’n’t take the little gemman’s things,” 
murmured the mother, feebly ; but faintness was steal- 
ing on her, and darkness closing over her sight. 

Three shillings ! ” said Bertie, who knew very 
little of the value of shillings; ‘‘that seems very lit- 
tle ! I think they cost sovereigns. Could you get a 
loaf of bread with three shillings?” 

“ Gu-r-r-r ! ” grinned Dick, and Bertie understood 
that the guttural sound meant assent and rapture. 


THE LITTLE EAUL. 


47 


“ But I cannot walk without shoes.” 

“ Walk ! yah ! ye’ll walk better. We niver have no 
shoes ! ” said Dick. 

“ Don’t you, really ? ” 

‘‘ Golly ! no ! Ye’ll walk ten times finer ; ye won’t 
trip, nor stumble, nor nothin’, and ye’ll run as fast 
again.” 

“ Oh, no, I shall not,” murmured Bertie, and he was 
going to say that he would be ashamed to be seen 
without shoes, only he remembered that, as these 
boys had none, that would not be kind. A desper- 
ate misery came over him at the thought of being 
shoeless, but then he reasoned with himself, “ To 
give was no charity if it cost you nothing ; did not 
the saints strip themselves to the uttermost shred for 
the poor ? ” 

He stooped and took off his shoes with the silver 
buckles on them, and placed them hastily on the 
floor. 

“ Take them, if they will get you bread,” he said, 
with the colour mounting in his face. 

Dick seized them with a yell of joy. “ Tarnation 
that I can’t go mysel’. Here, Tam, run quick and 
sell ’em to old Nan ; and get bread, and meat, and 
potatoes, and milk for baby, and Lord knows what ; 
p’raps a gill of gin for mammy.” 

“I don’t think we ought to rob little master, 
Dick,” murmured little Tam. His brother hurled 
a crutch at him, and Tam snatched up the pretty 
shoes and fled. 


48 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


“ My blazes, sir,” said Dick, with rather a shame- 
faced look, “ if you’d a beast like a lot of fire gnawing 
at your belly all night long, yer wouldn’t stick at nowt 
to get bread.” 

Bertie only imperfectly comprehended. The baby, 
tired of the sash, began to cry again ; and Dick, grown 
good-natured, danced it up and down. 

“ How old are you ? ” said Bertie. 

“ Nigh on eight,” said Dick. 

“ Dear me ! ” sighed the little Earl ; this rough, 
masterful, coarse-tongued boy seemed like a grown 
man to him. 

“ You won’t split on us ?” said Dick, sturdily. 

“ What is that ? ” asked Bertie. 

“ Not tell anybody you give us the shoes ; there’d 
be a piece of work.” 

“As if one told when one did any kindness!” 
murmured Bertie, with a disgust he could not quite 
conceal. “ I mean, when one does one’s duty.” 

“ But what’ll you gammon ’em with at home ? — 
they’ll want to know what you’ve done with your 
shoes.” 

“ I am not going home,” said the little Earl, and 
there was a something in the way he spoke that 
silenced Dick’s tongue, — which he would have called 
his clapper. 

“What in the world be the little swell arter?” 
thought Dick. 

Bertie meanwhile, with some awe and anxiety, was 
watching the livid face of the sick woman. He had 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


49 


never seen illness or death, but it seemed to him that 
she was very ill indeed. 

“ Are you not anxious about your mother ? ” he 
asked of the rough boy. 

“ Yes,” said Dick, sulkily, with the water coming 
in his eyes. “ Dad’s in the lock-up ; that’s wuss still, 
young sir.” 

“ Not worse than death,” said Bertie, solemnly. 
“ He will come back.” 

“ Oh, she’ll come round with a drop of gin and a 
sup of broth,” said Dick, confidently. “ ’Tis all 
hunger and frettin’, hers is.” 

“ I am glad I gave my shoes,” thought Bertie. 
Then there was a long silence, broken only by the 
hissing of the green brambles on the fire and the 
yelps of the baby. 

“Maybe, sir,” said Dick, after a little, “you’d put 
the saucepan on ? I can’t move with this here leg. 
If you’d pit some water out o’ kittle in him, he’ll be 
ready for cookin’ when the vittles come.” 

“ I will do that,” said Bertie, cheerfully, and he set 
the saucepan on by lifting it with both hands. It was 
very black, and its crock came off on his knicker- 
bockers. Then, by Dick’s directions, he found a pair 
of old wooden bellows, and blew on the sticks and 
sods ; but this he managed so ill that Dick wriggled 
himself along the floor closer to the fire and did it 
himself. 

“ You’re a gaby ! ” he said to his benefactor. 

“ What is that ? ” said Bertie. 


50 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


But Dick felt that it was more prudent not to 
explain. 

In half an hour Tam burst into the room, breath- 
less and joyous, his scruples having disappeared 
under the basket he bore. 

“ She gived me five shillin’ ! ” he shouted ; “ and 
I’s sure they’s wuth a deal more, ’cos her eyes 
twinkled and winked, and she shoved me a peg-top 
in ! ” 

“ Gie us o’t ! ” shrieked Dick, in an agony at being 
bound to the floor with all these good things before 
his sight. 

Little Tam, who was very loyal, laid them all out 
on the ground before his elder : two quartern loaves, 
two pounds of beef, onions, potatoes, a bit of bacon, 
and a jug of milk. 

Dick poured some milk into an old tin mug, and 
handed it roughly to Bertie. 

Feed the baby, will yer, whiles Tam and me 
cooks ? ” 

The little Earl took the can, and advanced to the 
formidable bundle of rags, who was screaming like a 
very hoarse raven. 

‘‘ I think you should attend to your mother first,” 
he said, gently, as the baby made a grab at the little 
tin pot, the look of which it seemed to know, and 
shook half the milk over itself. 

“ Poor mammy ! ” said Tam, who was gnawing a 
bit of bread ; and, with his bread in one hand, he got 
up and put a little gin and water quite hot between 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


51 


his mother’s lips. She swallowed it without opening 
her eyes or seeming to be conscious, and Tam climbed 
down from the bed again with a clear conscience. 

‘‘We’ll gie her some broth,” he said, manfully, 
while he and Dick, munching bread and raw bacon, 
tumbled the beef in a lump into the saucepan, 
drowned in water with some whole onions, in the 
common fashion of cottage-cooking. The baby, 
meanwhile, was placidly swallowing the milk that 
the little Earl held for it very carefully, and, when 
that was done, accepted a crust that he offered it to 
suck. 

The two boys were crouching before the crackling 
fire, munching voraciously, and watching the boiling 
of the old black pot. They had quite forgotten their 
benefactor. 

“My! What’ll Peg say when she’s to home?” 
chuckled Tam. 

“ She’ll say that she’d ha’ cooked better,” growled 
Dick. “ Golly I ain’t the fat good ? ” 

Bertie stood aloof, pleased, and yet sorrowful be- 
cause they did not notice him. 

Even the baby had so completely centred its mind 
in the crust that it had abandoned all memory of the 
red scarf. 

Bertie looked on a little while, but no one seemed 
to remember him. The boys’ eyes were glowing on 
the saucepan, and their cheeks were filled out with 
food as the cherubs in his chapel at home were puffed 
out with air as they blew celestial trumpets. 


52 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


He went to the door slowly, looked back, and then 
retreated into the sunshine. 

“ It would be mean to put them in mind of me,” he 
thought, as he withdrew. 

Suddenly a sharp pain shot through him : a stone 
had cut his unshod foot. 

“ Oh, dear me ! how ever shall I walk without any 
shoes or boots ! ” he thought, miserably ; and he was 
very nearly bursting out crying. 

On the edge of these fields was a wood, — a low, 
dark, rolling wood, — which looked to the little Earl, 
who missed his own forests, inviting and cool and 
sweet. By this time it was getting toward noon, 
and the sun was hot, and he felt thirsty and very 
tired. He was sad, too. He was glad to have satis- 
fied those poor hungry children, but their indifference 
to him when they were satisfied was chilling and 
melancholy. 

“ But then we ought not to do a kindness that we 
may be thanked,” he said to himself. “ It is a proper 
punishment to me, because I wished to be thanked, 
which was mean.” 

So he settled, as he usually did, that it was all his 
own fault. 

Happily for him, the ground was soft with summer 
dust, and so he managed to get along the little path 
that ran from the cottage through the lucern-fields, 
and from there the path became grass, which was 
still less trying to his little red stockings. 

Yet he was anxious and troubled; he felt heavily 



“ THE BABY, MEANWHILE, WAS PLACIDLY SWALLOWING THE 
MILK THAT THE LITTLE EARL HELD FOR IT, VERY 
CAREFULLY.” 



THE LITTLE EARL. 


55 


weighted for his battle with the world without any 
shoes on, and he felt he must look ridiculous. For 
the first time, St. Martin did not seem to him so very 
much of a hero, because St. Martin’s gift was only 
a cloak. Besides, without his sash, the band of his 
knickerbockers could be seen ; and he was afraid this 
was indecent. 

Nevertheless, he went on bravely, if lamely. Believe 
me, nothing sets the world more straight than think- 
ing that what is awry in it is one’s self. 

The wood, which was a well-known spinney famous 
for pheasants, was reached before very long, though 
with painful effort. It was chiefly composed of old 
hawthorn-trees and blackthorn, with here and there a 
larch or holly. The undergrowth was thick, and the 
sunbeams were playing at bo-peep with the shadows. 
Par away over the fields and thorns was a glimmer of 
blue water, and close around were all manner of ferns, 
of foxgloves, of grasses, of boughs. The tired little 
Earl sank downward under one of the old thorns with 
feet that bled. A wasp had stung him, too, through 
his stocking, and the stung place was smarting 
furiously. But how much more Christ and the 
saints suffered ! ” thought Bertie, seriously and piously, 
without the smallest touch of vanity. 

Lying on the moss under all that greenery, he felt 
refreshed and soothed, although the foot the wasp had 
stung throbbed a good deal. 

There were all sorts of pretty things to see : the 
pheasants, who were lords of the manor till October 


56 


THE LITTLE EABL, 


came around, did not mind him in the least, and swept 
smoothly by with their long tails like court mantles 
sweeping the grass. Blackbirds, those cheeriest of 
all birds, pecked at worms and grubs quite near him. 
Chaffinches were looking for hairs under the brambles 
to make their second summer nest with. Any hairs 
serve their purpose, — cows’, horses’, or dogs’ ; and if 
they get a tuft of hare-skin or rabbit-fur they are 
furnished for the year. A pair of little white-throats 
were busy in a low bush, gathering the catch-weed 
that grew thickly there, and a goldfinch was flying 
away with a lock of sheep’s wool in his beak. There 
were other charming creatures, too : a mole was 
hurrying to his underground castle, a nuthatch was 
at work on a rotten tree-trunk, and a gray, odd- 
looking bird was impaling a dead field-mouse on one 
of the thorn-branches. Bertie did not know that this 
gentleman was but the gray shrike, once used in 
hawking ; indeed, he did not know the names or 
habits of any of the birds ; and he lay still hidden in 
the ferns, and watched them with delight and mute 
amazement. There were thousands of such pretty 
creatures in his own woods and brakes at home, but 
then he was never alone, — he was always either walk- 
ing with Father Philip or riding with William, and in 
neither case was he allowed to stop and loiter and lie 
in the grass, and the sonorous voice of the priest 
scattered these timid dwellers in the greenwood as 
surely as did the tread of the pony’s hoofs and the 
barking of Ralph. 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


57 


‘‘ When I am a man I will pass all my life out-of- 
doors, and I will get friends with all these pretty 
things, and ask them what they are doing,’’ he thought ; 
and he was so entranced in this new world hidden 
away under the low hawthorn boughs of this spinney 
that he quite forgot he had lost his shoes and did not 
know where he would sleep when night came. He 
had quite forgotten his own existence, indeed; and 
this is just the happiness that comes to us always, 
when we learn to love the winged and four-footed 
brethren that Nature has placed so near us, and whom, 
alas ! we so shamefully neglect when we do not do 
even worse and persecute them. Bertie was quite 
oblivious that he was a runaway, who had started 
with a very fine idea of finding out who it was that 
kept him in prison, and giving him battle wherever he 
might be ; he was much more interested in longing to 
know what the great gray shrike was, and why it hung 
up the mouse on the thorn and flew away. If you do 
not know any more than he did, I may tell you that the 
shrikes are like your father, and like their game when 
it has been many days in the larder. It is one of the 
few ignoble tastes in which birds resemble mankind. 

The shrike flew away to look for some more mice, 
or frogs, or little snakes, or cockroaches, or beetles, for 
he is a very useful fellow indeed in the woods, though 
the keepers are usually silly and wicked enough to 
try and kill him. His home and his young ones were 
above in the thicket, and he had stuck all round their 
nests insects of all kinds; still, he was a provident 


58 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


bird, and was of opinion that every one should work 
while it is day. 

When the shrike flew away after a bumble-bee, the 
little Earl fell asleep. What with fatigue, and excite- 
ment, and the heat of the sun, a sound, dreamless 
slumber fell upon him there among the birds and 
the sweet smell of the May buds ; and the goldfinch 
sang to him, while he slept, such a pretty song that 
he heard it though he was so fast asleep. The gold- 
finch, though, did not sing for him one bit in the 
world; he sang for his wife, who was sitting among 
her callow brood hidden away from sight under the 
leaves, and with no greater anxiety on her mind than 
fear of a possible weasel or rat gnawing at her nest 
from the bottom. 

When the little Earl awoke, the sun was not full 
and golden all about him as it had been ; there were 
long shadows slanting through the spinney, and 
there was a great globe descending behind the downs 
of the western horizon. It was probably about six 
in the evening. Bertie could not tell, for, unluckily 
for him, he had always had a watch to rely upon, and 
had never been taught to tell the hour from the 

shepherd’s hour-glass ” in the field flowers, or calcu- 
late the time of day from the length of the shadows. 
Even now, though night was so nigh, the thought of 
where he should find a bed did not occur to him, for 
he was absorbed in a little boy who stood before him, 
— a very miserable little black -haired, brown-cheeked 
boy, who was staring hard at him. 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


59 


“ Now, he, I am sure, is as poor as Dick and Tam,” 
thought the little Earl, “ and I have nothing left to 
give him.” 

The little boy was endeavouring to hide behind 
his back a bright bundle of ruffled feathers, and in his 
other hand he held a complicated arrangement of 
twine and twigs with a pendent noose. 

That Bertie did know the look of, for he had seen 
his own keepers destroy such things in his own 
woods, and had heard them swear when they did so. 
So his landowner’s instincts awoke in him, though the 
land was not his. 

“ Oh, little boy,” he said, rubbing his eyes and 
springing to his feet, “ what a wicked, wicked little 
boy you are ! You have been snaring a pheasant ! ” 

The small boy, who was about his age, looked 
frightened and penitent; he saw his accuser was 
a little gentleman. 

‘‘ Please, sir, don’t tell on me,” he said, with a 
whimper. “I’ll gie ye the bird if ye won’t tell on 
me.” 

“ I do not want the bird,” said Bertie, with magis- 
terial gravity. “ You are a wicked little boy to offer 
it to me. It is not your own, and you have killed it. 
You are a thief 

“ Please, sir,” whimpered the little poacher, “ dad 
alius tooked ’em like this.” 

“ Then he is a thief, too,” said Bertie. 

“ He was a good un to me,” said the small boy, 
and then fairly burst out sobbing. “ He was a good 


60 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


un to me, and he’s dead a year come Lady-day, and 
mother she’s main bad, and little Susie’s got the croup, 
and there’s nowt to eat to home ; and I hear Susie 
cryin’, cryin’, cryin’, and so I gae to cupboard where 
dad’s old tackle be kep’, and I gits out this here, and 
says I to myself, maybe I’ll git one of them birds i’ spin- 
ney, ’cos they make rare broth, and we had a many on 
’em when dad was alive, and Towser.” 

‘‘ Who was Towser ? ” 

‘‘ He was our lurcher ; keeper shot him ; he’d bring 
of ’em in his mouth like a Chrisen ; and gin ye’ll tell 
on me, they’ll clap me in prison like they did dad, 
and it’s birch rods they’d give yer, and mother’s 
nowt but me.” 

“ I do not know who owns this property,” said 
Bertie, in his little sedate way, “ so I could not tell 
the owner, and I should not wish to do it if I could ; 
but still it is a very wicked thing to snare birds at all, 
and when they are game-birds it is robbery. 

I know as how they makes it so,” demurred the 
poacher’s son. “ But dad said as how — ” 

“No one makes it so,” said Bertie, with a little 
righteous anger ; “ it is so ; the birds are not yours, 
and so, if you take them, you are a thief.” 

The boy put his thumb in his mouth and dangled 
his dead pheasant. 

A discussion on the game-laws was beyond his 
powers, nor was even Bertie conscious of the mighty 
subject he was opening, though the instincts of the 
landowner were naturally in him, and it seemed to 


TBE LITTLE EARL. 61 

him so shocking to find a boy with such views as this 
as to meum and tuum^ that he almost fancied the sun 
would fall from the sky. The sun, however, glowed 
on, low down in the wood beyond a belt of firs, and 
the green downs, and the gray sea; and the little 
sinner stood before him, fascinated by his appearance 
and frightened at his woids. 

‘‘ Do you know who owns this coppice ? ” asked 
Bertie ; and the boy answered him, reluctantly : 

“ Yes ; Sir Henry.” 

“ Then, what you must do,” said Bertie, ‘‘ is to go 
directly with that bird to Sir Henry, and beg his 
pardon, and ask him to forgive you. Go at once. 
That is what you must do.” 

The boy opened his eyes and mouth in amaze. 

“ That I won’t never do,” he said, doggedly ; “ I’d 
be took up to the lodge afore I’d open my mouth.” 

“ Not if I go with you,” said Bertie. 

“ Be you one of the fam’ly, sir ? ” 

“ No,” said Bertie, and then was silent in some con- 
fusion, for he bethought him that, without any shoes 
on, he might also be arrested at the lodge gates. 

“ I thought as not, ’cos you’re barefoot,” said the 
brown-cheeked boy, with a little contempt supplying 
the place of courage. Dunno who you be, sir, but 
seems to I as you’ve no call to preach to me ; you be 
a-trespassin’, too.” 

Bertie coloured. 

“ I am not doing any harm,” he said, with dignity ; 
“ you are ; you have been stealing. If you are not 


62 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


really a wicked boy, you will take the pheasant 
straight to that gentleman, and beg him to forgive 
you, and I dare say he will give you work.” 

‘‘ There’s no work for my dad’s son,” said the little 
poacher, half sadly, half sullenly ; “ the keepers are 
all agen us ; ’tis as much as mother and me and Susie 
can do to git a bit o’ bread.” 

‘‘ What work can you do ? ” 

“ I can make the gins,” said the little sinner, touch- 
ing the trap with pride. ‘‘ Mostwhiles, I never come 
out o’ daylight ; but all the forenoon Susie was going 
off her head, want o’ summat t’ eat.” 

‘‘ I’m sorry for Susie and you,” said the little Earl, 
with sympathy. “ But indeed, indeed, nothing can 
excuse a theft, or make God — ” 

“ The keepers ! ” yelled the boy, with a scream like 
a hare’s, and he dashed head-foremost into the bushes, 
casting on to Bertie’s lap the gin and the dead bird. 
Bertie was so surprised that he sat perfectly mute and 
still ; the little boy had disappeared as fast as a 
rabbit bolts at sight of a ferret. Two grim, big men 
with dogs and guns burst through the hawthorn, and 
one of them seized the little Earl with no gentle hand. 

“ You little blackguard ! you’ll smart for this,” 
yelled the big man. ‘‘ Treadmill and birch rod, or 
I’m a Dutchman.” 

Bertie was so surprised, still, that he was silent. 
Then, with his little air of innocent majesty, he said, 
simply, “ You are mistaken ; I did not kill the bird.” 

Now, if Bertie had had his usual nicety of apparel. 



“ TWO GRIM, BIG MEN . . . BURST THROUGH THE HAAVTHORN, 
AND ONE OF THEM SEIZED THE EITTLE EARL.” 


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THE LITTLE EARL. 


65 


or if the keeper had not been in a fuming fury, the 
latter would have easily seen that he had accused 
and apprehended a little gentleman. But no one in 
a violent rage ever has much sense or sight left to aid 
him, and Big George, as this keeper was called, did 
not notice that his dogs were smelling in a friendly 
way at his prisoner, but only saw that he had to do 
with a pale-faced lad without shoes, and very untidy 
and dusty-looking, who had snares and a snared 
pheasant at his feet. 

Before Bertie had even seen him take a bit of cord 
out of his pocket, he had tied the little Earl’s hands 
behind him, picked up the pheasant and the trap, and 
given some directions to his companion. The real 
culprit was already a quarter of a mile off, burrowing 
safely in the earth of an old fox killed in February, — 
a hiding-place with which he was very familiar. 

Bertie, meanwhile, was quite silent. He was think- 
ing to himself, ‘‘ If I tell them another boy did it, they 
will go and look for him, and catch him, and put him 
in prison ; and then his mother and Susie will be so 
miserable, — more miserable than ever. I think I 
ought to keep quiet. Jesus never said anything when 
they buffeted him.” 

‘‘ Ah, you little gallows-bird, you’ll get it this time ! ” 
said the keeper, knotting the string tighter about his 
wrists, and speaking as if he had had the little Earl 
very often in such custody. 

“ You are a very rude man,” said Bertie, with the 
angry colour in his cheeks; but Big George heeded 


66 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


him not, being engaged in swearing at one of his dogs, 
— a young one, who was trotting after a rabbit. 

‘‘ I know who this youngster is. Bob,” he said to 
his companion ; “ he’s the Radley shaver over from 
Blackgang.” 

Bertie wondered who the Radley shaver was that 
resembled him. 

“He has the looks on him,” said the other, pru- 
dently. 

“ Sir Henry’s dining at Chigwell to-night, and he’ll 
have started afore we get there,” continued Big George. 
“Go you on through spinney far as Edge Pool, and 
I’ll take and lock this here Radley up till morning. 
Blast his impudence, — a pheasant ! Think of the likes 
of it ! A pheasant ! If ’t had been a rabbit, ’t had 
been bad enough.” 

Then he shook his little captive vigorously. 

Bertie did not say anything. He was not in trepi- 
dation for himself, but he was in an agony of fear lest 
the other boy should be found in the spinney. 

“ March along afore me,” said Big George, with 
much savageness. “ And if you tries to bolt. I’ll blow 
your brains out and nail you to a barn-door along o’ 
the owls.” 

The little Earl looked at him with eyes of scorn 
and horror. 

“ How dare you touch Athene’s bird ? ” 

“ How dare I what, you little saucy blackguard ? ” 
thundered Big George, and fetched him a great box 
on the ears which made Bertie stagger. 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


67 


“ You are a very bad man,” he said, breathlessly. 
“ You are a very mean man. You are big, and so you 
are cruel : that is very mean indeed.” 

‘‘ You’ve the gift of the gab, little devil of a Rad- 
ley,” said the keeper, wrathfully ; “ but you’ll pipe 
another tune when you feel the birch and pick oakum.” 

Bertie set his teeth tight to keep his words in ; he 
walked on mute. 

“You’ve stole some little gemman’s togs as well 
as my pheasant,” said Big George, surveying him. 
“ Why didn’t you steal a pair of boots when you 
was about it ? ” 

Bertie was still mute. 

“I will not say anything to this bad man,” he 
thought, “ or else he will find out that it was not I.” 

The sun had set by this time, leaving only a 
silvery light above the sea and the downs ; the pale, 
long twilight of an English day had come upon the 
earth. 

Bertie was very white, and his heart beat fast, and 
he was growing very hungry; but he managed to 
stumble on, though very painfully, for his courage 
would not let him repine before this savage man, who 
was mixed up in his mind with Bluebeard, and Thor, 
and Croquemitaine, and Richard III., and Nero, and 
all the ogres that he had ever met with in his reading, 
and who seemed to grow larger and larger and larger 
as the sky and earth grew darker. 

Happily for his shoeless feet, the way lay all over 
grass-lands and mossy paths ; but he limped so that 


68 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


the keeper swore at him many times, and the little 
Earl felt the desperate resignation of the martyr. 

At last they came in sight of the keeper’s cottage, 
standing on the edge of the preserves, — a thatched 
and gabled little building, with a light glimmering in 
its lattice window. 

At the sound of Big George’s heavy tread, a woman 
and some children ran out. 

“ Lord ha’ mercy ! George ! ” cried the wife. “ What 
scarecrow have you been and got ? ” 

A Radley boy,” growled George, — “ one of the 
cussed Radley boys at last, — and a pheasant snared 
took in his very hand ! ” 

“ You don’t mean it ! ” cried his wife ; and the 
small children yelled and jumped. “ What’ll be done 
with him, dad ? ” cried the eldest of them. 

“I’ll put him in fowl-house to-night,” said Big 
George, “ and up he’ll go afore Sir Henry fust thing 
to-morrow. Clear off, young uns, and let me run 
him in.” 

Bertie looked up in Big George’s face. 

“ I had nothing to do with killing the bird,” he said 
in a firm though a faint voice. “You quite mistake. 
I am Lord Avillion.” 

“ Stop your pipe, or I’ll choke yer,” swore Big 
George, enraged by what he termed the “ darned 
cheek ” of a Radley boy ; and without more ado he 
laid hold of the little Earl’s collar and lifted him 
into the fowl-house, the door of which was held open 
eagerly by his eldest girl. 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


69 


There was a great flapping of wings, screeching of 
hens, and piping of chicks at the interruption, where 
all the inmates were gone to roost, and one cock set 
up his usual salutation to the dawn. 

“ That’s better nor you’ll sleep to-morrow night,” 
said Big George, as he tumbled Bertie on to a truss 
of straw that lay there, when he went out himself, 
slammed the door, and both locked and barred it on 
the outside. 

Bertie fell back on the straw, sobbing bitterly. His 
feet were cut and bleeding, his whole body ached like 
one great bruise, and he was sick and faint with hun- 
ger. “ If the world be as difficult as this to live in,” 
he thought, how ever do some people manage to live 
almost to a hundred years in it ? ” and to his eight- 
year-old little soul the prospect of a long life seemed 
so horrible that he sobbed again at the very thought 
of it. It was quite dark in the fowl-house ; the rus- 
tling and fluttering of the poultry all around sounded 
mysterious and unearthly ; the strong, unpleasant 
smell made him faint, and the pain in his feet grew 
greater every moment. He did not scream or go into 
convulsions ; he was a brave little man, and proud ; 
but he felt as if the long, lonely night there would kill 
him. 

Half an hour, perhaps, had gone by when a woman’s 
voice at the little square window said, softly, “ Here 
is bread and water for you, poor boy ; and I’ve put 
some milk and cheese, too, only my man mustn’t 
know it.” 


70 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


Bertie with great effort raised himself, and took 
what was pushed through the tiny window ; a mug of 
milk being lowered to him last by a large, red, fat 
hand, on which the light of a candle held without 
was glowing. 

“Thanks very much,” said the little Earl, feebly. 
“ But, madam, I did not kill that bird, and indeed I 
am Lord Avillion.” 

The good woman went within to her lord, and 
said timidly to him, “ George, are you sartin sure 
that there’s a Radley boy ? He do look and speak 
like a little gemman, and he do say as how he 
is one.” 

Big George called her bad names. 

“ A barefoot gemman ! ” he said, with a sneer. “ You 
thunderin’ fool ! it’s weazen-faced Vic Radley, as 
have been in our woods a hundred times if wunce, 
though never could^ slap eyes on him quick enough 
to pin him.” 

The good housewife took up her stocking-mending 
and said no more. Big George’s arguments were 
sometimes enforced with the fist, and even with the 
pewter pot or the poker. 

Meanwhile, the little Earl in the hen-house was so 
hungry that he drank the milk and ate the bread and 
cheese. Both were harder and rougher things than 
any he had ever tasted ; but he had now that hunger 
which had made the boy on the stile relish the turnip, 
and, besides, another incident had occurred to give 
him relish for the food. 



IX THE FOWL - HOrSE. 





THE LITTLE EARL. 


73 


At the moment when he had sat down to drink the 
milk, there had tumbled out from behind the straw a 
round black and white object, unsteady on its legs, and 
having a very broad nose and a very woolly coat. 
The moon had risen by this time, and was shining in 
through the little square window, and by its beams 
Bertie could see this thing was a puppy, — a New- 
foundland puppy some four months old. He wel- 
comed it with as much rapture as ever Robert Bruce 
did the spider. It had evidently been awakened 
from its sleep by the smell of the food. It was 
a pleasant, companionable, warm, and kindly crea- 
ture; it knocked the bread out of his hand, and 
thrust its square mouth into his milk, but he shared 
it willingly, and had a hearty cry over it that did 
him good. 

He did not feel all alone, now that this blundering, 
toppling, shapeless, amiable baby-dog had found its 
way to him. He caressed it in his arms and kissed 
it a great many times, and it responded much more 
gratefully than the human baby had done in Jim 
Bracken’s cottage, and finally, despite his bleeding 
feet and his tired limbs, he fell asleep with his face 
against the pup’s woolly body. 

When he awoke, he could not remember what had 
happened. He called for Deborah, but no Deborah 
was there. The moon, now full, was shining still 
through the queer little dusky place ; the figures of 
the fowls, rolled up in balls of feathers and stuck 
upon one leg, were all that met his straining eyes. 


74 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


He pulled the puppy closer and closer to him; for 
the first time in his life he felt really frightened. 

I never touched the pheasant,” he cried, as loud 
as he could. “I am Lord Avillion! You have no 
right to keep me here. Let me out ! Let me out ! Let 
me out ! ” 

The fowls woke up, and then cried and cackled and 
crowed, and the poor pup whined and yelped dolefully, 
but he got no other answer. Everybody in Big 
George’s cottage was asleep, except Big George him- 
self, who, with his revolver, his fowling-piece, and a 
couple of bulldogs, was gone out again into the woods. 

At home, Bertie in his pretty bed, that had belonged 
to the little Boi de Rome, had always had a soft light 
burning in a porcelain shade, and his nurse within 
easy call, and Ralph on the mat by the door. He had 
never been in the dark before, and he could hear 
unseen things moving and rustling in the straw, and 
he felt afraid of the white moonbeams shifting hither 
and thither and shining on the shape of the big 
Brahma cock till the great bird looked like a vulture. 
Once a rat ran swiftly across, and then the fowls 
shrieked, and Bertie could not help screaming with 
them ; but in a minute or two he felt ashamed of him- 
self, for he thought, ‘‘ A rat is God’s creature as much 
as I am ; and, as I have not done anything wrong, I 
do not think they will be allowed to hurt me.” 

Nevertheless, the night was very terrible. Without 
the presence of the puppy, no doubt, the little Earl 
would have frightened himself into convulsions and 


THE LITTLE EAEL. 


75 


delirium ; but the pup was so comforting to him, so 
natural, so positively a thing real and in nowise of 
the outer world, that Bertie kept down, though with 
many a sob, the panics of unreasoning terror which 
assailed him as the moon sailed away past the square 
loophole, and a great darkness seemed to wrap him 
up in it as though some giant were stifling him in a 
magic cloak. 

The pup had not long been taken from its mother, 
and had been teased all day by the keeper’s children, 
and was frightened, and whimpered a good deal, and 
cuddled itself close to the little Earl, who hugged it 
and kissed it in paroxysms of loneliness and longing 
for comfort. 

With these long, horrible black hours, all sorts of 
notions and terrors assailed him ; all he had ever read 
of dungeons, of enchanted castles, of entrapped princes, 
of Prince Arthur and the Duke of Rothsay, of the 
prisoner of Chillon and the Iron Mask, of every kind 
of hero, martyr, and wizard-bewitched captive, crowded 
into his mind with horrifying clearness, thronging on 
him with a host of fearful images and memories. 

But this was only in his weaker moments. When 
he clasped the puppy and felt its warm wet tongue 
lick his hair, he gathered up his courage ; after all, he 
thought. Big George was certainly only a keeper, — 
not an ogre, or an astrologer, or a tyrant of Athens 
or of Rome. 

So he fell off again, after a long and dreadful 
waking-time, into a fitful slumber, in which his feet 


76 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


ached and his nerves jumped, and the frightful visions 
assailed him just as much as when he was awake ; and 
how that ghastly night passed by him, he never knew 
very well. 

When he again opened his eyes there was a dim 
gray light in the fowl-house, and sharp in his ear was 
ringing the good-morrow of the Brahma chanticleer. 

It was daybreak. 

A round red face looked in at the square hole, and 
the voice of the keeper’s wife said, ‘‘ Little gemman. 
Big George will be arter ye come eight o’clock, and 
’t ’ll go hard wi’ yer. Say now, yer didn’t snare the 
bird?” 

“ No,” said Bertie, languidly, lying full length on 
the straw ; he felt shivery and chilly, and very stiff 
and very miserable in all ways. 

“ But yer know who did ! ” persisted the woman. 
“Now, jist you tell me, and I’ll make it all square 
with George, and he’ll let you out, and we’ll gie ye 
porridge, and we’ll take ye home on the donkey.” 

The little Earl was silent. 

“ Now, drat ye for a obstinate ! I can’t abide a 
obstinate,” said the woman, angrily. “ Who did 
snare the bird? jist say that; ’tis all, and mighty 
little.” 

“ I will not say that,” said Bertie ; and the woman 
slammed a wooden door that there was to the loop- 
hole, and told him he was a mule and a pig, and that 
she was not going to waste any more words about 
him ; she should let the birds out by the bars. What 


THE LITTLE EAEL. 


77 


she called the bars, which were two movable lengths 
of wood at the bottom of one of the walls, did, in point 
of fact, soon slip aside, and the fowls all cackled and 
strutted and fluttered after their different manners, 
and bustled through the opening toward the daylight 
and the scattered corn, the Brahma cock having much 
ado to squeeze his plumage where his wives had 
passed. 

‘‘ The puppy’s hungry,” said Bertie, timidly. 

Drat the puppy ! ” said the woman outside ; and 
no more compassion was wrung out of her. The little 
Earl felt very languid, light-headed, and strange ; he 
was faint, and a little feverish. 

“ Oh, dear, pup ! What a night ! ” he murmured, 
with a burst of sobbing. 

Yet it never occurred to him to purchase his liberty 
by giving up little guilty Dan. 

Some more hours rolled on, — slow, empty, deso- 
late, — filled with the whine of the pup for its mother, 
and the chirping of unseen martins going in and out 
of the roof above-head. 

“ I suppose they mean to starve me to death,” 
thought Bertie, his thoughts clinging to the Duke 
of Roth say’s story. 

He heard the tread of Big George on the ground 
outside, and his deep voice cursing and swearing, and 
the children running to and fro, and the hens cackling. 
Then the little Earl remembered that he was born of 
brave men, and must not be unworthy of them ; and 
he rose, though unsteadily, and tried to pull his dis- 


78 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


ordered dress together, and tried, too, not to look 
afraid. 

He recalled Casablanca on the burning ship, — Casa- 
blanca had not been so very much older than he. 

The door was thrust open violently, and that big, 
grim, black man looked in. “ Come, varmint ! ” he 
cried out ; “ come out and get your merits : birch 
and bread and water and Scripture-readin’ for a good 
month, I’ll go bail ; and ’t ’ud be a year if I wur 
the beak.” 

Then Bertie, on his little shaky, shivering limbs, 
walked quite haughtily toward him and the open air, 
the puppy waddling after him. ‘‘ You should not be 
so very rough and rude,” he said. “ I will go with 
you. But the puppy wants some milk.” 

Big George’s only answer was to clutch wildly at 
Bertie’s clothes, and hurl him anyhow, head first, into 
a little pony-cart that stood ready. “ Such tarnation 
cheek I never seed,” he swore ; “ but all them Radley 
imps are as like one to t’other as so many ribston- 
pippins, — all the gift o’ the gab and tallow-faces ! ” 

Bertie, lying very sick and dizzy in the bottom of 
the cart, managed to find breath to call out to the 
woman on the door-step, “ Please do give the puppy 
something ; it has been so hungry all night.” 

“ That’s no Radley boy,” said the keeper’s wife to 
her eldest girl as the cart drove away. Only a little 
gemman ’ud ha’ thought of the pup. Strikes me, lass, 
your daddy’s put a rod in pickle for hisself along o’ 
his tantrums and tivies.” 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


79 


It was but a mile and a half from the keeper’s cot- 
tage to the mansion of the Sir Henry who was owner 
of these lands ; and the pony spun along at a swing 
trot, and Big George, smoking and rattling along, 
never deigned to look at his prisoner. 

“Another poachin’ boy, Mr. Mason?” said the 
woman who opened the lodge gates ; and Big George 
answered, heartily : 

“Ay, ay, a Radley imp caught at last. Got the 
bird on him, and the gin, too. What d’ye call that ? ” 

“ I call it like your vigilance, Mr. Mason,” said the 
lodge-keeper. “ But, lawks ! he do look a mite ! ” 

Big George spun on up the avenue with the air of 
a man who knew his own important place in the world, 
and the little cart was soon pulled up at the steps of a 
stately Italian-like building. 

“ See Sir Henry to wunce ; poachin’ case,” said Big 
George to the footman lounging about the doorway. 

“ Of course, Mr. Mason. Sir Henry said as you 
was to go to him directly.” 

“ Step this way,” said one of the men ; and Big 
George proceeded to haul Bertie out of the cart as 
unceremoniously as he had thrown him in ; but the 
little Earl, although his head spun and his shoeless 
feet ached, managed to get down himself, and staggered 
across the hall. 

“ A Radley boy ! ” said Big George, displaying him 
with much pride. “ All the spring and all the winter 
I’ve been after that weazen-faced varmint, and now 
I’ve got him.” 




80 


THE LITTLE EABL, 


“ Sir Henry waits,” said a functionary ; and Big 
George marched into a handsome library, dragging his 
captive behind him, toward the central writing-table, 
at which a good-looking elderly gentleman was sitting. 

Arrived before his master, the demeanour of Big 
George underwent a remarkable change ; he cringed, 
and he pulled his lock of hair, and he scraped about 
with his leg in the humblest manner possible, and 
proceeded to lay the dead pheasant and the trap and 
gear upon the table. 

“Took him in the ac’, Sir Henry,” he said, with 
triumph piercing through deference. “ I been after 
him ages ; he’s a Radley boy, the little gallows-bird ; 
he’s been snarin’ and dodgin’ and stealin’ all the winter 
long, and here we’ve got him.” 

“ He is very small, — quite a child,” said Sir 
Henry, doubtingly, trying to see the culprit. 

“He’s stunted in his growth along o’ wickedness, 
sir,” said Big George, very positively ; “ but he’s old 
in wice ; that’s what he is, sir, — old in wice.” 

At that moment Bertie managed to get in front of 
him, and lifted his little faint voice. 

“ He has made a mistake,” he said, feebly ; “ I 
never killed your birds at all, and I am Lord 
Avillion.” 

“ Good heavens ! you thundering idiot ! ” shouted 
Sir Henry, springing to his feet. “ This is the little 
Earl they are looking for all over the island, and all 
over the country ! My dear little fellow, how can I 
ever — ” 


THE LITTLE EARL. 


81 


His apologies were cut short by Bertie dropping 
down in a dead faint at his feet, so weak was he from 
cold, and hunger, and exhaustion, and unwonted ex- 
posure. 

It was not very long, however, before all the 
alarmed household, pouring in at the furious ring- 
ing of their master’s bell, had revived the little Earl, 
and brought him to his senses none the worse for the 
momentary eclipse of them. 

“ Please do not be angry with your man,” mur- 
mured Bertie, as he lay on one of the wide leathern 
couches. “ He meant to do his duty ; and please — 
will you let me buy the puppy ? ” 

Of course Sir Henry would not allow the little Earl 
to wander any farther afield, and of course a horseman 
was sent over in hot haste to apprise his people, misled 
by the boat-lad, who, frightened at his own share in 
the little gentleman’s escape, had sworn till he was 
hoarse that he had seen Lord Avillion take a boat for 
Rye. 

So Bertie’s liberty was nipped in the bud, and very 
sorrowfully and wistfully he strayed out on to the rose- 
terrace of Sir Henry’s house, awaiting the coming of 
his friends. The puppy had been fetched, and was 
tumbling and waddling solemnly beside him ; yet he 
was very sad at heart. 

“ What are you thinking of, my child ? ” said Sir 
Henry, who was a gentle and learned man. 

Bertie’s mouth quivered. 

“ 1 see,” he said, hesitatingly, — “I see I am noth- 


82 


THE LITTLE EABL. 


ing. It is the title they give me, and the money I 
have got, that make the people so good to me. When 
I am only me, you see how it is.’’ 

And the tears rolled down his face, which he had 
heard called “ wizen ” and ‘‘ puny ” and likened to 
tallow. 

“ My dear little fellow,” said his grown-up com- 
panion, tenderly, “ there comes a day when even kings 
are stripped of all their pomp, and lie naked and stark ; 
it is then that which they have done, not that which 
they have been, that will find them grace and let them 
rise again.” 

“ But I am nothing ! ” said Bertie, piteously. “ You 
see, when the people do not know who I am, they 
think me nothing at all.” 

I don’t fancy Peggy and Dan will think so when 
we tell them everything,” said the host. ‘‘We are all 
of us nothing in ourselves, my child ; only, here and 
there we pluck a bit of lavender, — that is, we do some 
good thing or say some kind word, — and then we get 
a sweet savour from it. You will gather a great deal 
of lavender in your life, or I am mistaken.” 

“ I will try,” said Bertie, who understood. 

So, off the downs that day, and in the pleasant haw- 
thorn woods of the friendly little Isle, he plucked two 
heads of lavender, — humility and sympathy. Believe 
me, they are worth as much as was the moly of Ulysses. 


THE END. 














5 ’’ 


S JUL 80 1900 

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